Happy New Year! General Game Discussion--January 2026

[neogunhero]

Been pretty quiet on here mainly because gaming side of things has been quiet as well. I've been messing around with my Akai MPD 226 again making random little tunes here and there and having fun with that. We have a pretty major snowstorm coming in this weekend with the potential for ice, so I'll be gaming then, as long as we don't lose power. Maybe this will be a good time to re-download a GameCube emulator and play some SSX.

 

[Johnway]

Still playing Wildlands, so far we're 2 and half regions complete. So far resistance is light, but playing on hard its no push over as the enemies can overwhelm players quickly. I'm playing the game as single player and with AI. Mixed feelings about the AI, on the one hand they are quite competent, i can rely on them to take out targets and provided i order them, they are competent fighters. But on the flip side, they aren't infallible like when i'm pursing an enemy in a car and it takes them much longer to blast down vehicles or targeting enemies in the car.
Jury's still out though, i'll need to level them up and see how good they really get.


I didn't realize that Wildlands would be so slow to play. I was expecting far cry pace. The game is to spend much of my time scouting an entire base, slowly pick off as many enemies using sync shot before going in to pick off the odd straggelers. I'm breezing through the game so far, but its probably because its on easier difficulty atm. We'll see what difficulty levels 3 or 4 will provided...

 

[Pifanjr]

I tried to continue my StoneBlock 4 Minecraft modpack today instead of just playing more FrogComposband, but I couldn't get into it. I didn't remember what I was doing last and I didn't care enough to pick something else to work on.

Which is how it usually goes with games for me. I'll find something I get obsessed with and it'll be on my mind constantly, but if I can't play the game for a while or I get distracted with something else I can't get back into it. Sometimes reading about the game can get me back into the mood, but most of the time I just find another game to obsess over.

 

[Zimbaly]

I found a bin I didn't realize had some old games and pc stuff in. PC Gamer Demo disc from back in the day. 8, 9 and a couple of the 2.x's.

Had a couple commodore games in there too. Old Jumpman Junior and Gateway to Apshai cartridges.
Hellgate London, Secret Weapons Over Normandy, Combat Simulator 1..... might have to try a few.

 

[BeardyHat]

I tried to continue my StoneBlock 4 Minecraft modpack today instead of just playing more FrogComposband, but I couldn't get into it. I didn't remember what I was doing last and I didn't care enough to pick something else to work on.

Which is how it usually goes with games for me. I'll find something I get obsessed with and it'll be on my mind constantly, but if I can't play the game for a while or I get distracted with something else I can't get back into it. Sometimes reading about the game can get me back into the mood, but most of the time I just find another game to obsess over.

This is exactly how my brain works too.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I tried to continue my StoneBlock 4 Minecraft modpack today instead of just playing more FrogComposband, but I couldn't get into it. I didn't remember what I was doing last and I didn't care enough to pick something else to work on.

Which is how it usually goes with games for me. I'll find something I get obsessed with and it'll be on my mind constantly, but if I can't play the game for a while or I get distracted with something else I can't get back into it. Sometimes reading about the game can get me back into the mood, but most of the time I just find another game to obsess over.

Well, it's a completely different sort of game in which you hardly have to remember anything, but I stopped playing Boltgun for a few days. The levels are maze-like, I just loaded in, looked around for a moment and thought, "Yeah, I have no idea," and I decided I'd come back to it later. I may just start the whole level over.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I'm loving Bladesong. It has in-depth blacksmithing and a great, well-written story. I started over to change some things about my character, and I'm currently in the part of the game where it is easy to soft-lock yourself. It's a pretty bleak game. I've already been killed by robbers on night 3. I think the only way out of that is to turn over your money. I tried a few different ways, but always failed the rolls.

 

[Zloth]

Terra Invicta is being confusing. Every time I start up, I'm thinking there really isn't much to do. Some hours later, I'm forcing myself to shut down and go to bed.

Lately, I've been messing with the Servants faction that wants to worship the alien invaders. They've been taking over the nations around China and will probably use them to try and get influence in China itself. I got Kazakhstan before they could and now I'm stirring up unrest in Mongolia. I'm at my max of control points so, if Mongolia rebels and joins me, I'll have to do some shenanigans. Maybe drop Sweden.

I managed to turn one of their councilors into a double agent. (Councilors are, basically, your players in the game. Each one can do some sort of mission each week or two.) He gives me all the info on what councilors the Servants have, what missions they are doing, what technologies they are researching, and so on. Also, I get a slider set to a percentage. If I crank it all the way up, the double agent will purposefully fail every mission. If I put it at 40%, he'll fail any mission with less than a 40% chance of working. So, if I crank it all the way up, I'll block several Servant moves, but they'll figure out that the guy is a turncoat quickly. If I keep it under 50%, the AI will not notice for a long time. But most missions have a higher chance of winning than that, so I won't block much. It makes for an excellent game choice!

Now I need to get back to playing it. That will help my PC heat up the room a little more!

 

[Colif]

This is very educational and totally accurate

 

[Johnway]

Plodding around GR: wildlands and 4 areas completed. So good progress so far, maybe one or 2 a week as i just join the dots for all the areas and unlocking stuff. Still very much mixed feelings with the game. Its ok and still around the 6/10 mark as i spend more time playing it as a stealth game. The AI of my buddies continues to be a bit meh being able to hold their own and eliminate targets and sometimes not helping. I have a found annoying deficiency where i can't order my colleagues when i;m in a stationary turret or in a vehicle. For example in one objective i was got into a mounted turret and covered the main road but they didn't cover the sides as i had hoped and i couldn't order them to shift fire. To their credit they can pull off some amazing shots like sniping targets from a chopper but in gurillia mode they were mostly useless. Bloody annoying.


meanwhile in other games fire emblem awakening i'm onto the last chapter. I really should try and just get it over and done with but i'm just grinding when i don't need to as my A team easily destroys story mode content. DLC stuff proves a much harder challenge.

I've also started on Space Cats the TC WAD and i have to say i'm very impressed with it. having a lot of fun with the game.

 

[BeardyHat]

Finished my game of Civ 6 the other day. Somehow managed to eek out a victory through Diplomacy, which I really didn't expect. But around Turn 330 or so, I noticed I was in the lead on that particular metric, so I shot for it and managed to finish the game with 20 Diplo points by building the Statue of Liberty.

I could play more Civ, but now I'm kind of looking for something else to play. Kind of thinking about a 4x, but not sure what that is. I kind of want to try Age of Wonders 3 again, but I feel that it gets bogged down by combat, even though that's kind of the focus of the game. Also kind of thinking about Warlock 2, which I already own and there's apparently a good mod for it called Renaissance. But I've actually not touched Warlock 2 really at all, so I'd like to familiarize myself with it first.

Then there's also Old World, which I have played very little of, but I'm not feeling up to right now because it's tons of reading the little effects, which at the moment are completely foreign to me.

If I'm honest, I kind of just want to play Endless Legend. It's the 4x game I've played the most of and the one I really enjoy and it's been several years since I played.

 

[Rolfil]

I've been optimising component chains in Eden Crafters. Although Early Access it has a lot of content. It's much more straightforward than Satisfactory which I found a pain to line up all the machines. I've only played on the Ocean World which was in the demo and have managed to stop the Tidal Wave and just got to the Tier 2 crafting materials.

Also been driving around Scandinavia a lot in ETS2. I was a bit dubious about buying this as the DLC was £14.99 but the added content is huge!

Non gaming related, I've got annoyed using Notion so have just started playing around with Docker to host my own notes app. I've tried a few but so far I think flatnotes is my favourite.

 

[Zloth]

If I'm honest, I kind of just want to play Endless Legend. It's the 4x game I've played the most of and the one I really enjoy and it's been several years since I played.

That's a really good one. Maybe my Sword of the Stars review will tempt you another way. (Though that's even more combat!)

 

[BeardyHat]

That's a really good one. Maybe my Sword of the Stars review will tempt you another way. (Though that's even more combat!)

Boy that looks cool, but also kind of impenetrable for me. One thing I've realized about myself relatively recently is that I think I prefer a simpler strategy game, like Civ. I looked at Terra Invicta and it looks absolutely amazing, but also like one of those games where I start it up, look at the interface, click around and then shut it down, thinking I'll figure it out sometime later and never do.

That said, SotS Complete is only $2.49 on GoG right now, so I may pick it up, because it's cheap enough that I won't feel bad if it's not for me...

 

[Pifanjr]

I stayed up way too late playing Just Cause 3 yesterday. You go from liberating 1-2 places, then doing 1-2 challenges, then maybe doing a story mission, then doing it all over again. It's a very addicting gameplay loop because each thing only takes maybe 15 minutes tops, so it's very easy to do "just one more thing".

I really like the parachute and wingsuit with the grappling hook. It's always nice when an open world game gives you a way to quickly get around the world, even if I end up faceplanting every time I try to use the wingsuit.

While blowing stuff up is always fun, I do feel like it's lacking something. The targets are just that, big red static targets, and your arsenal is fairly limited. It's not like Mercenaries 2 where you get a lot of options to wreak havoc. Meanwhile, there are too many enemies and no stealth mechanics, so your best bet is to fly in, throw some explosives around and fly away again. It's not like Far Cry where you can scout out an outpost and figure out a plan of attack.

---

Today I tried out Enderal: The Forgotten Stories, a total conversion mod for Skyrim that has its own Steam page. I played through the beginning of the game until you're set free to wander the world (I think), but then the game crashed when I discovered my first point of interest. And now it gets stuck on the loading screen before the main menu every time I try to start the game again.

The bit I played was intriguing, but I really wanted to see what the game would be like once it opened up.

 

[neogunhero]

Was snowed in all weekend, was a bit too inebriated to post. I did play a lot of games.

Starting out with Highguard, the newest F2P online shooter. If you guys been paying attention, just like with every other game, there was a huge following praying on the games downfall. They all wanted it to fail before even playing the game, then the moment its released it gets flooded with Overwhelmingly Negative reviews. I don't get the mindset these types of gamers have. Anyways, I decided to play it and... it's fine. I think the concept is really cool and unique, though just not my type of game.

Very basically, it's a 3v3 FPS with large maps, fast traversal, unique powers, and a cool gamemode. The main gameplay starts with both teams of 3 at their base. Their base has a massive power shield around it. In order to destroy the enemy base's shield, you have to pick up the Shieldbreaker which spawns in the map once every few minutes. With the Shieldbreaker, you can use it to break the enemy base shield, raid their base, and destroy their two caches. In between raiding phases, you have to explore the map to gear up Battle Royale style with massive chests holding various tiered weapons, consumables and shields. I think it's very unique, very cool, though 3v3 PVP is too much pressure for me. You can't hide behind a massive team, you have to perform at your peak the entire match. Just not my type of game, though I hope it finds success. The trend of hating on a game before it's released just doesn't make sense to me, I thought more competition and more choice was almost always a good thing.

Next up I played a lot of Far Cry 5. Absolutely love that game. The NPC companion system is one of the best in an FPS game. You can have up to two companions, as if they are named characters, they will have all sorts of unique dialogue for any configuration of companions you have. Sharky and Hurk are cousins so they bounce off each other great, but put them with the sniper or bow hunting ladies, their dialogue and demeanor totally changes. It's hilarious.

That's really it. I was pretty drunk all weekend, I mean hell what else was there to do? Here's a game: For each outpost in FC5 you liberate, take a shot. That's basically what I was doing!

 

[BeardyHat]

I stayed up way too late playing Just Cause 3 yesterday. You go from liberating 1-2 places, then doing 1-2 challenges, then maybe doing a story mission, then doing it all over again. It's a very addicting gameplay loop because each thing only takes maybe 15 minutes tops, so it's very easy to do "just one more thing".

I really like the parachute and wingsuit with the grappling hook. It's always nice when an open world game gives you a way to quickly get around the world, even if I end up faceplanting every time I try to use the wingsuit.

While blowing stuff up is always fun, I do feel like it's lacking something. The targets are just that, big red static targets, and your arsenal is fairly limited. It's not like Mercenaries 2 where you get a lot of options to wreak havoc. Meanwhile, there are too many enemies and no stealth mechanics, so your best bet is to fly in, throw some explosives around and fly away again. It's not like Far Cry where you can scout out an outpost and figure out a plan of attack.

---

Today I tried out Enderal: The Forgotten Stories, a total conversion mod for Skyrim that has its own Steam page. I played through the beginning of the game until you're set free to wander the world (I think), but then the game crashed when I discovered my first point of interest. And now it gets stuck on the loading screen before the main menu every time I try to start the game again.

The bit I played was intriguing, but I really wanted to see what the game would be like once it opened up.

There's definitely not much more to it. You can also do all the unlocks by finding stuff, but that's about it.

That said, Just Cause 2 and 3 are the only two games I've ever 100%'d. They're just so much fun for me and I'm not sure why. Also the DLC's, specifically the Sky Fortress is pretty awesome; gives you a jetpack, which makes Rico feel like a super hero.

 

[Zloth]

Surpicco is still a pain in the tailpipe in JC3. You're supposed to "wreak havoc" in police stations to take the town, but that town has a small station. You can level the place, and it still won't be enough! I had to look up how to finish it when I played years ago and I had to look it up again this time. What I didn't know last time but found out this time is that friendly military vehicles that are on police station grounds also count. So...

View: https://youtu.be/sRqoNGHSC_U


Taking towns does get same'y. Make sure you do the main questline as you go along. This isn't a good game for the do-sidequests-first-then-main-campaign approach!

 

[Colif]

This isn't a good game for the do-sidequests-first-then-main-campaign approach!

JC2 was the same. Ignoring main quest completely wouldn't last long as eventually they come looking for you anyway. I prefer open world games that don't force story onto you.

I didn't know charts were meant to look like ski slopes.

popular game lol